Archive for the ‘Charlotte Oval’ Category

The Chevy Silverado (Truck) series returned to Lowe’s, which was good as it meant I already had a setup made from earlier in the season. I joined a three race split and was rated 7th of the 15th entrants (decent SOF then!)

I took my usual approach of keeping out of trouble whilst still trying to hang onto the lead pack (e.g. I took two tyres on an early stop for track position which worked well) and generally the race was going OK. I still picked up the inevitable 4x incident points from a spin in front of me but luckily it was a ‘ghost’ hit, i.e. I didn’t hit the car so my car wasn’t damaged. Still took a 4x though

My broken sequential shifter reared its ugly head on a restart near the end of the race – accelerating from 1st my truck immediately shifted into 3rd. Obviously that screwed my progress and I almost caused a huge crash behind me (luckily we all managed OK). Gonna have to seriously think about sorting this out, it’s affecting a lot of races now….

I also had a potential disaster in pit road. I was on the outside/fast pit lane line and there was a car immediately inside me. My pit box was approaching and I thought all cars in the pitlane were ghosts (i.e. you can drive through them) so I turned into him, to try and line up with my pit crew. Completely unexpectedly I nudged his rear quarter panel which took me by surprise! Minor damage, but could have been much much worse. Not sure I understand how the pit lane ghost cars actually work after this incident, can’t make any assumptions I guess.

Race was going well at the end, and I was holding on for a 4th place finish. Inside the last 20 laps things started getting very tight and aggressive and there was a moment when we were getting 3-wide. I was the bottom car so hugged the apron as much as possible but looped my truck exiting turn 4. Luckily no damage or yellow but I pottered home for a 5th place finish, which is my best Lowe’s result to date. 112 points.

Amazingly I find myself in a very strong position in division 3. Currently holding second position, and that is with one or two poor results in my season which I am hoping to improve upon in weeks 8 – 12. I might be looking good for a second place finish in my division this season

This was my first official race at Sebring, and despite liking the track I really struggled to find my pace here.

I went into a race and started in 13th of 16 (despite matching my PB in qualifying!). I had a pretty good race though – kept it on the black stuff and picked up places when the faster guys dropped off the circuit. I had a few interesting battles on the track with much faster drivers. My car had a very low downforce setup and despite being much slower in the corners I was still able to pull away on the straights – even when my rival was firmly in my slipstream. Such a cool way that you can have two cars with completely different setups challenging each other on the track in very different ways.

I soaked up lap after lap of pressure and eventually brought it home for an 8th place finish for 108 points (better than I expected!). Another zero incident race too, and a whole single point of iRating to the good!

I was really looking forward to this race as I found I had a strong setup that actually had me running closer to the sharp end than I usually run. Was looking for a strong finish. As you can see from the video of the lap 1 start, the race was ruined before it started when someone in the outside pacing lane span their wheels on the green flag and barrelled into my car, destroying my right front alignment.

I never recovered from the reset and finished 10th, one lap down. 68 points and a mandatory 4x incident (mandatory in a sense that it seems every truck race results in a minimum of a 4x hit somewhere….) In future I now know what I should do when resetting to make sure I don’t go a lap down.

At the end of the week I found I had just enough time to squeeze in a Skippy race at VIR Full. Despite it being a challenging track I found it easy to get back into the feel of the track and only needed a handful of laps to get back to my previous pace here.

I started 9th in a full field of 14 and did well to avoid incidents throughout the race. There was some lap one spinners that I had to navigate around and some passing made as I worked my way back up through the field.

I had a nightmare spin on lap 2 as I passed a slower car – I got my braking perfectly into turn 1 and I had given the corner quite a large margin of respect but annoyingly I used more steering wheel than I needed to and lost the car with a lazy spin.

Later in the race I saw the craziest set of collisions I’ve ever seen. I arrived at the top of a crest to find around four cars all basically parked and slowly getting back onto the racing surface. A comedy of errors ensued as they took turns to collide into each other, and even flipping one car! I tip-toed through the carnage and drove on to a 6th place finish which was good for 100 points.

Quite a good week for me this week – managed to squeeze in a race in three different series.

Skip Barber – Infineon IRL
Joined the strongest grid I’ve ever raced (SOF was 3447!) and basically set about not coming last! Had a good, fun, race with some close dicing at points and finished 7th out of 10th which I was actually very satisfied with. The winner took 215 points!

Chevy Silverado – Lowe’s
Needing to complete my fourth official race in season 4 (in order to qualify for the oval B licence) I joined a Lowe’s race early in the week. So far all the truck races have been exhilerating – the immersion is like nothing else in iRacing. The races are harder and more strenous than anything else I’ve raced and I was genuinely scared at several moments in the race! Unfortunately I had a few incidents here, one 4x that was my fault and another when I could not avoid a crash ahead. Finished 7th of 14 though in a strong field and scored 109 points. My B licence is sorted!

Late Model – Stafford
Ugh. Had a setup that was horrendously slow to the top times and could not get close to the pace (was almost 1 second off the times), but went into a race anyway as I had only seven scoring weeks at this point. Had a safe but ultimately forgettable race and finished 4th out of 11, taking 65 points.

So all in all a good week of racing – 3 good races and 2 were incident free. Currently sitting on dual 4.99 C licences (partly due to the clean races, partly due to the recent rating changes by iRating to make it easier) but I’m looking forward to seeing how they convert to B licence values.

We enter week 13 next week and welcome the two new A level cars to the service – can’t wait!